C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Opposition
Opposition strengthens the manly will.
Opposition is the very spur of love.
Opposition always inflames the enthusiast, never converts him.
It is not the victory that makes the joy of noble hearts, but the combat.
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
To make a young couple love each other, it is only necessary to oppose and separate them.
Nobody loves heartily unless people take pains to prevent it.
Difficulties spur us whenever they do not check us.
Difficulty adds to result, as the ramming of powder sends the bullet the further.
A strenuous soul hates cheap success. It is the ardor of the assailant that makes the vigor of the defendant.
Nature is upheld by antagonism. Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. We acquire the strength we have overcome.
The more powerful the obstacle, the more glory we have in overcoming it; and the difficulties with which we are met are the maids of honor which set off virtue.
There is no possible success without some opposition as a fulcrum; force is always aggressive, and crowds something or other, if it does not hit and trample upon it.
It is not ease, but effort—not facility, but difficulty, that makes men. There is, perhaps, no station in life in which difficulties have not to be encountered and overcome before any decided measure of success can be achieved.
A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against and not with the wind. Even a head wind is better than none. No man ever worked his passage anywhere in a dead calm. Let no man wax pale, therefore, because of opposition.
The effects of opposition are wonderful. There are men who rise refreshed on hearing of a threat; men to whom a crisis which intimidates and paralyzes the majority—demanding, not the faculties of prudence and thrift, but comprehension, immovableness, the readiness of sacrifice—comes graceful and beloved as a bride.